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A Very Special Episode of Sm.net: dios Goes to a Make-out Party - by diospadre

A Very Special Episode of Sm.net: dios Goes to a Make-out Party

I doubt that more than a handful of organizations could say this, but I'm confident that Starmen.net could stand toe to toe with TNT when they say "We know drama." Unlike TNT's 5 year old movies and Whilliam H. Macy inspirational vehichles though, our brand of drama seems to be an element that nobody wants around. Everyone knows what I'm talking about, such events as having EB.net ripped out from under us, the Great Deletion of December 2000, and the revolving door of webmasters. And of course most recently the loss of Xodnizel and the mood of the forums of the past few days. Despite any bad stuff that happens however, SM.net continues sailing on, continously (though sometimes slowly) improving and growing. But how can this be possible? With a name change, a number of deletions, loss of key site members, and hatred being thrown around like water from a bucket brigade, surely the site should have crumbled and its members disbanded.

While I'm sure there are a great number of psychological and sociological reasons why we've all stuck together and continued to improve the site, they don't matter. What matters is that not only have we lived through every so-called disaster that's been thrown our way, the site has benefitted from them all. Take the domain name scandal and Great Deletions, for example. People who were around at the time can tell you that in the last months that the site was known as Earthbound.net, it was a hotbed of immaturity. Few people got along, scandals were rife in parts of the site so insignificant as Interactive Fiction, and updates had slowed down majorly. When the change came, however, everyone on the site came together to encourage the staff to rebuild or to hate the guy that "stole" the old domain name. Infighting stopped, and everyone really started to get along. The site deletions also led to better hosting plans, layouts, and infrastructure changes that helped the webmasters grow and learn from the site. This leads to the ever improving functionality of the site and forums, as well as the insanity wrought by reidman and Mars in that week of December.

With these examples of the past, there is no reason to think that Xod leaving or the state of the forums today in any way spells doom for us all. As a collective, the visitors of SM.net prove to be intelligent and adaptable. Though Xod has left, reidman quickly found a team of four people who are working on the new forums and layout. I have no doubt that while they may be struggling at the moment, they will quickly learn how to do what needs to be done, and in the end we will have four people who are highly knowledgeable about the workings of the site, put together possibly a better force than even Xod was.

As for the forums, I remain convinced that they've hit a minor bump in the road. At points, my treatment of two people was likely a little overboard, but even this didn't result in benefits to us all. The two most controversial of topics served to show exactly how far is too far, and it is unlikely that the line will be crossed again soon. In addition, they've resulted in some of the most inspiring, most hilarious, and craziest topics that anyone has ever participated in. On a personal note, the "bad" topics have pointed out to me that I need to curtail my posting so people won't turn into "dios clones". This is not only because too many of me is a bad thing (we don't need new people being ganged up on by hordes of me), and also to protect my style.

Now some people may disagree with me. They'll say that everyone needs to constantly be nice to everyone so there will never be any drama. As explained above, I think the only way to improve ourselves is to keep the drama coming, but to make sure that instead of forecasting the end of the site and wishing for the good old days, we all make like Kirsten Dunst and say "bring it on!"